Greeting card displays as used in retail stores have been made in many forms, generally designed to neatly present a large number and variety of cards in a dense but attractive arrangement. Common features of such displays are successive rows of card shelves, tiered or vertical, with dividers on each shelf to define multiple card pockets. The shelves are attached to and supported by a back panel which is supported upon a vertically oriented frame, sometimes referred to as a “gondola”. The frame or frames may include spaced-apart upright members with multiple attachment points, with other structural members attached to span between the upright members. In some greeting card displays, the shelves and pocket dividers may be rigidly attached to a back panel supported by the gondola frame by fasteners, so that any assembly or adjustment of the display requires removal and re-attachment of such fasteners. Also, the spacing of the shelves and dividers is constant, so that there is little or no flexibility to accommodate cards of different sizes in the same display, or to change the number of card pockets on any given shelf.
Some displays use a single piece back panel on which the rows or tiers of shelves are formed. In such tiered displays, the back panel is typically manufactured as a single piece in which multiple tiers are molded to form rows of card pockets. The vertical spacing of the rows is thus fixed with no provision for adjustment to accommodate cards of different sizes or to alter the card product mix of the display. Although displays of this type are economical to manufacture due to fewer required parts, flexibility is sacrificed, and the display appearance is standardized and generic.
Typically, these displays are very large, given the significant amount of merchandise that must be displayed thereon. Traditional tiered card shelves contain a single unitary tier on each side of the card shelf frame. The top of the shelf is very narrow but as the rows increase the entire display gets wider thereby utilizing significant amounts of floor space. If two or more of these displays are placed adjacent to each other on the retail display floor, aisle space is diminished, leaving little space for consumers to browse. There is a need in the art for a retail display fixture for greeting cards and non-greeting card merchandise that minimizes the floor space used by the display while maximizing the amount of merchandise that can be displayed.